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Oh yes you have. Every dealer everywhere charges a "Destination Fee." That is what you pay for delivery to the dealer's. That line item for the price of the car

Oh yes you have. Every dealer everywhere charges a "Destination Fee." That is what you pay for delivery to the dealer's. That line item for the price of the car is non-negotiable. There is wiggle room on MSRP etc. This was the first google result that came up for "car destination fee" :- A "destination charge" is a fee that the manufacturer charges to deliver a vehicle from the factory to the dealership, and that is passed on by the dealer to the consumer; it is not included in the MSRP of the vehicle. Destination charges are typically not negotiable.

selimthegrim 8y ago
This is typically on the order of $300-500 though
smolsky 8y ago
...and yet I managed to knock the price down by 5K and 2K off MSRP when I bought my last 2 vehicles. So this destination charge is often a moot point with regular car brands/dealers.
Jedd 8y ago
> Oh yes you have. Every dealer everywhere ... You may be doing that thing where you assume parent, and indeed everyone, is in the same country you are in, subject to the same laws, regulations, and traditional rorts.
chrisseaton 8y ago
Why would anyone want to negotiate individual line items rather than just negotiating on the final bottom-line price? Why would I care if I'm reducing the destination fee or the actual price? What difference does it make to me?
- 1123581321 8y ago
  The line items usually come up when negotiating the final price. It’s hard to avoid discussing the details unless one party has a string negotiating position and highly values minimal communication. As to why you’d want to: if you ask someone to quote bottom line, and they do, then you can start picking their line items apart to go lower. Or if you quote high, you can use line items as justification for it to some buyers.
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    > then you can start picking their line items apart to go lower But why? If I want a lower price I don’t care where they have to shave it from to do that do I? I don’t care about how they’ve arrived at a price or how it’s accounted for if I just want it be lower. I say I want that price to be lower in order for me to buy and they say yes or no depending on if it’s worth it for them.
    - 1123581321 8y ago
      Based on your last sentence, you might be ending negotiations too early. An early “bottom-line” ultimatum leaves money on the table because the details haven’t been fully considered by the other party, so (in auto sales) the seller hedges with a higher price. A more thorough discussion can bring down the offer they are willing to accept. You don’t have to care about the details to use them in a negotiation.
      - chrisseaton 8y ago
        I don’t get it - asking ‘can you reduce line item n by x’ is exactly the same thing as ‘can you reduce the bottom line by x’, except the former asks them to do something they may not be able to do (that’s how this conversation started - the delivery fee) and the latter lets them achieve what you want any way they’re able to. So why would you ever use the former approach? It’s strictly worse.
        arbie 8y ago
        This is the human factor at play.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        jancsika 8y ago
        > I don’t get it - asking ‘can you reduce line item n by x’ is exactly the same thing as ‘can you reduce the bottom line by x’ "Can you reduce bottom line by x" is like saying, "the documentation is a bit vague, can you improve it please?" "Can you reduce line item n by x" is like saying, "there's no way the user could possibly intuit that the sampling period may be truncated to precisely hit the target value after the specified duration. Given that the programming language itself has no specification, this longstanding behavior must be explained clearly in the user docs." Which response do you suppose will be more likely to lead to an improvement in the docs? It's probably the one that shows evidence you know your domain and how to assess quality there. Of course, that analogy is the dream. In reality the car salesperson will come back with the reduced line item but with adjustments somewhere else. And it's hard to keep track of because, for example, how would an increase in the down payment affect your idea of the "total bottom line?" This would be like a developer countering by saying, "Ok, but to clarify that section of the docs I added threading to the event loop." And then every single developer suddenly becomes some kind of darkworld saboteur, and you finally give in by saying, "I guess this is just how software gets made..."
gamblor956 8y ago
Oh no, I definitely have never paid a delivery fee. I am one of those weirdos that reads the entire sales contact before signing. You have to be pretty bad at negotiating to be hit with a delivery fee since in my neck of the woods, aka SoCal, most dealers will waive that for everyone.

selimthegrim 8y ago

This is typically on the order of $300-500 though

smolsky 8y ago

...and yet I managed to knock the price down by 5K and 2K off MSRP when I bought my last 2 vehicles. So this destination charge is often a moot point with regular car brands/dealers.

Jedd 8y ago

> Oh yes you have. Every dealer everywhere ... You may be doing that thing where you assume parent, and indeed everyone, is in the same country you are in, subject to the same laws, regulations, and traditional rorts.

chrisseaton 8y ago

Why would anyone want to negotiate individual line items rather than just negotiating on the final bottom-line price? Why would I care if I'm reducing the destination fee or the actual price? What difference does it make to me?

1123581321 8y ago
The line items usually come up when negotiating the final price. It’s hard to avoid discussing the details unless one party has a string negotiating position and highly values minimal communication. As to why you’d want to: if you ask someone to quote bottom line, and they do, then you can start picking their line items apart to go lower. Or if you quote high, you can use line items as justification for it to some buyers.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  > then you can start picking their line items apart to go lower But why? If I want a lower price I don’t care where they have to shave it from to do that do I? I don’t care about how they’ve arrived at a price or how it’s accounted for if I just want it be lower. I say I want that price to be lower in order for me to buy and they say yes or no depending on if it’s worth it for them.
  - 1123581321 8y ago
    Based on your last sentence, you might be ending negotiations too early. An early “bottom-line” ultimatum leaves money on the table because the details haven’t been fully considered by the other party, so (in auto sales) the seller hedges with a higher price. A more thorough discussion can bring down the offer they are willing to accept. You don’t have to care about the details to use them in a negotiation.
    - chrisseaton 8y ago
      I don’t get it - asking ‘can you reduce line item n by x’ is exactly the same thing as ‘can you reduce the bottom line by x’, except the former asks them to do something they may not be able to do (that’s how this conversation started - the delivery fee) and the latter lets them achieve what you want any way they’re able to. So why would you ever use the former approach? It’s strictly worse.
      - arbie 8y ago
        This is the human factor at play.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - jancsika 8y ago
        > I don’t get it - asking ‘can you reduce line item n by x’ is exactly the same thing as ‘can you reduce the bottom line by x’ "Can you reduce bottom line by x" is like saying, "the documentation is a bit vague, can you improve it please?" "Can you reduce line item n by x" is like saying, "there's no way the user could possibly intuit that the sampling period may be truncated to precisely hit the target value after the specified duration. Given that the programming language itself has no specification, this longstanding behavior must be explained clearly in the user docs." Which response do you suppose will be more likely to lead to an improvement in the docs? It's probably the one that shows evidence you know your domain and how to assess quality there. Of course, that analogy is the dream. In reality the car salesperson will come back with the reduced line item but with adjustments somewhere else. And it's hard to keep track of because, for example, how would an increase in the down payment affect your idea of the "total bottom line?" This would be like a developer countering by saying, "Ok, but to clarify that section of the docs I added threading to the event loop." And then every single developer suddenly becomes some kind of darkworld saboteur, and you finally give in by saying, "I guess this is just how software gets made..."

gamblor956 8y ago

Oh no, I definitely have never paid a delivery fee. I am one of those weirdos that reads the entire sales contact before signing. You have to be pretty bad at negotiating to be hit with a delivery fee since in my neck of the woods, aka SoCal, most dealers will waive that for everyone.